Jenna is a child without a mother. Not an orphan, per se, but close to it. Her mother vanished when she was a toddler. Her father is in an institution. But she's not willing to accept she has no one, not without proof. How do you find someone who doesn't want to be found, though? For Jenna, it's to enlist the services of a fallen-from-grace psychic, and a fallen-from-grace former cop turned PI. Can this mismatched threesome uncover the truth of what really happened all those years ago?
| Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult | |
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| Category: Women's Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Zoe Morris
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| Summary: A brilliantly researched book that seamlessly links elephant grief and human grief, this is a one of a kind book that's not to be missed. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 496 | Date: July 2015 |
| Publisher: Hodder Paperbacks | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 978-1444778168 | |
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If you are looking for a book that will suck you in and then spit you out as a big, blubbering messy heap on the floor, look no further. This book is fantastic and reminds me why I got into Picoult's books in the first place. It has all the ingredients for a perfect story, but more than this, they're woven together seamlessly, with a constant level of suspense and intrigue to keep you on the edge of your seat. The key way this is created is through the varying narrators which pull the story this way and that way and distract you from what is coming next in the previous character's tale.
I liked Jenna a lot. She is a precocious child and can hold her own with the adults she encounters. She is so driven to find her mother that nothing will stand in her way, not being a teenager with limited funds, nor that nagging feeling from deep within her DNA that tells her to stick with science, not the science fiction of psychics.
All Picoult books have a common element of a strong theme that has required research, interviews, a lot of background reading. In this book, that theme is elephants. It's not as odd as it sounds, because Alice and Jenna used to live on an elephant sanctuary, but the sheer amount of elephant intelligence that comes through in this book is astounding, and I now know infinitely more about the creatures than I ever felt the need to know before. They always say you should write what you know but that only works for a few books, so I very much admire the hard graft that goes into a book like this, learning a topic from scratch and then picking out the useful, important or interesting facts that the readers need to know.
This book did not end as I expected it to, and all I can say is I was glad I was home alone when I came to the last few chapters because I was in no fit state to be seen in public. There is a heart wrenching twist and nothing could have prepared me for the pain I felt for that family. You should read this one for the ending alone. It is stunning.
I'd like to thank the publishers for supplying this book. I enjoyed it so, so much.
There's more family drama of a different kind in The Silent Sister by Diane Chamberlain, while My Sister's Keeper was the first book I read from this author, and one I still go back to time and again.
Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult is in the Top Ten Women's Fiction 2015.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Leaving Time by Jodi Picoult at Amazon.com.
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